Ron woke up with his face on the floor of his foyer, in the middle of steadily growing pool of his own saliva.
His body woke with a jerk, a sudden jump, then settled as his brain went into a hard restart. In a flash, all of the major details loaded in, reminding him of the important things. His name was Ron Jackson, he was a bank teller, he lived in a reasonably upscale neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina, he had a wife, he had a dog, he had a car that he'd just finished paying and was only now showing engine problems. He was middle-aged with a growing bald spot, he worked out just enough to be not too fat and not too thin, he had a stable job with little chance of promotion and little chance of being fired. Just a normal, stable, average American life.
Until he answered the door five minutes ago, anyway. If it even was five minutes - he honestly couldn't be sure on that fact. He'd just come in from a boring day at the job, looking forward to enjoying some TV time in the precious hours before his wife, Anna, returned from her day job at the library. Just as he was pulling off his tie, the doorbell rang, and he didn't think much of it, not at first. He thought he'd heard a car pulling up a minute or so. The library wasn't too far away, only a mile or so, and sometimes Anna stopped by on her break for a quick meal. Nonchalant and cool, he made his way out of the bedroom, passed the living room, stepped into the foyer, opened the door, and-
And...
And that was where it got fuzzy, with details he was still trying to put together as he pushed up off the floor. He'd opened the door and his wife hadn't been there. Someone else. Someone bigger, someone close to his size. Whoever this guy was, he moved fast, so fast that Ron couldn't get a good look at whoever he was as he came rushing into the house. The next thing he knew, the intruder was behind him, arms were circling around his throat, he put up a fight for all of five seconds as his airway was squeezed shut, and then there was only darkness.